St Andrews Research Repository

St Andrews University Home
View Item 
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  • Login
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering

Thumbnail
View/Open
Bachmann_2017_SciAdv_IonSputtering_CC.pdf (946.4Kb)
Date
24/05/2017
Author
Bachmann, Maja D.
Nair, Nityan
Flicker, Felix
Ilan, Roni
Meng, Tobias
Ghimire, Nirmal J.
Bauer, Eric D.
Ronning, Filip
Analytis, James G.
Moll, Philip J. W.
Keywords
Weyl semi-metals
Proximity-induced superconductivity
Majorana-mode
Selective ion sputtering
Microstructuring
Topological quantum devices
QC Physics
DAS
Metadata
Show full item record
Altmetrics Handle Statistics
Altmetrics DOI Statistics
Abstract
By introducing a superconducting gap in Weyl or Dirac semimetals, the superconducting state inherits the nontrivial topology of their electronic structure. As a result, Weyl superconductors are expected to host exotic phenomena, such as nonzero-momentum pairing due to their chiral node structure, or zero-energy Majorana modes at the surface. These are of fundamental interest to improve our understanding of correlated topological systems, and, moreover, practical applications in phase-coherent devices and quantum applications have been proposed. Proximity-induced superconductivity promises to allow these experiments on nonsuperconducting Weyl semimetals. We show a new route to reliably fabricate superconducting microstructures from the nonsuperconducting Weyl semimetal NbAs under ion irradiation. The significant difference in the surface binding energy of Nb and As leads to a natural enrichment of Nb at the surface during ion milling, forming a superconducting surface layer (Tc ~ 3.5 K). Being formed from the target crystal itself, the ideal contact between the superconductor and the bulk may enable an effective gapping of the Weyl nodes in the bulk because of the proximity effect. Simple ion irradiation may thus serve as a powerful tool for the fabrication of topological quantum devices from monoarsenides, even on an industrial scale.
Citation
Bachmann , M D , Nair , N , Flicker , F , Ilan , R , Meng , T , Ghimire , N J , Bauer , E D , Ronning , F , Analytis , J G & Moll , P J W 2017 , ' Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering ' , Science Advances , vol. 3 , no. 5 , e1602983 . https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602983
Publication
Science Advances
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602983
ISSN
2375-2548
Type
Journal article
Rights
2017 © The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
Work by N.N. and J.G.A. is partly supported by the Office of Naval Research under the Electrical Sensors and Network Research Division, Award No. N00014-15-1-2674, and by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s EPiQS Initiative through Grant GBMF4374. M.D.B. and P.J.W.M. acknowledge funding through the Max Planck Society. M.D.B. acknowledges studentship funding from the EPSRC under grant no. EP/I007002/1. N.N. is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant no. DGE 1106400. F.F. acknowledges support from a Lindemann Trust Fellowship of the English Speaking Union. R.I. is funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative. T.M. is funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through GRK 1621 and SFB 1143. N.J.G. and E.D.B. were supported under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science. F.R. was supported by the Los Alamos National Laboratory Laboratory Directed Research and Development program. Data underpinning this publication can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.17630/04280577-35c4-44e7-97d2-5c827ace7a4e.
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11018

Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Advanced Search

Browse

All of RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunderThis CollectionBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunder

My Account

Login

Open Access

To find out how you can benefit from open access to research, see our library web pages and Open Access blog. For open access help contact: openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Accessibility

Read our Accessibility statement.

How to submit research papers

The full text of research papers can be submitted to the repository via Pure, the University's research information system. For help see our guide: How to deposit in Pure.

Electronic thesis deposit

Help with deposit.

Repository help

For repository help contact: Digital-Repository@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Give Feedback

Cookie policy

This site may use cookies. Please see Terms and Conditions.

Usage statistics

COUNTER-compliant statistics on downloads from the repository are available from the IRUS-UK Service. Contact us for information.

© University of St Andrews Library

University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013532.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter